"The Stanford History Education Group, a research organization, has developed a curriculum called 'Reading Like a Historian,' which assembles material from various chapters of American history and poses a thematic question for students to answer. For example, to answer the question of what John Brown was trying to do when he raided Harpers Ferry in 1859, they read several accounts, including one by Brown’s son, an excerpt from the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, and a speech and letter from Brown himself. The goal isn’t just to teach students the origins of the Civil War, but to give them the ability to read closely, think critically, evaluate sources, corroborate accounts, and back up their claims with evidence from original documents.... Finally, let’s give children a chance to read books—good books. It’s a strange feature of all the recent pedagogical innovations that they’ve resulted in the gradual disappearance of literature from many classrooms.... The best way to interest young people in literature is to have them read good literature, and not just books that focus with grim piety on the contemporary social and psychological problems of teenagers.... The culture wars, with their atmosphere of resentment, fear, and petty faultfinding, are hostile to the writing and reading of literature. The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recently predicted that the novels of the next 10 to 15 years 'will be awful … Art has to be able to go to a place that’s messy, a place that’s uncomfortable'..."
Writes George Packer, in "The Grown-Ups Are Losing It/We’ve turned schools into battlefields, and our kids are the casualties" (The Atlantic).
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54 comments:
The goal isn’t just to teach students the origins of the Civil War, but to give them the ability to read closely, think critically, evaluate sources, corroborate accounts, and back up their claims with evidence from original documents...
Once the proles and middle class got access to college, it became too dangerous to educate college students, due to sheer numbers and suspect class loyalties, and so indoctrination became the order of the day. STEM is not exempted from this requirement. They should use all of their grounding in history to understand what is happening here really, instead of naively presuming that it's some kind of oversight.
The quoted methods were assumed and honored, even at the little podunk college I went to. If universities were trying to destroy the US, what would they do differently?
what John Brown was trying to do when he raided Harpers Ferry in 1859
i always wondered about that, myself. Do you have to pay to register? I can't afford college
Well, good luck with that!
"The best way to interest young people in literature is to have them read good literature."
Bingo.
I don't care what 10 year olds read, as long as its lots of it.(the "good") will come in time. Gentle help in introducing more substantive material, and then branching out into new genres. Once you love to read, its a continual motion machine, that never needs anything, but a library, and amazon.
Why are the kids the casualties as the title of this article as well as how the article starts out? While the public education system was telling parents to trust them with their children, the system was busy turning the children into good little Bolshevist lefties, getting the kids to question their gender identities and / or sexuality, socialism / Marxism good and capitalism bad, and trying many different curriculum teaching experiments that don’t work and strayed from the tried and true methods. All the while the educrats were neglecting the basics of reading at grade level, doing basic math, and proper English (eg. “going woke” - an excellent example of piss poor grammar if there ever was one). Parents were horrified when they found out the children that they thought they were raised to be good citizens were the vanguard of the violent demonstrations and riots in 2020, that shook them to the core. And those parents with kids still in school seeing the CRT crap being fed to their kids while remote learning during the pandemic instead of the basics to get their kids ready for adulthood started questioning what was being taught, they started fighting for their kids’ futures with the schools, teachers, and school boards. More importantly, they started voting for political candidates who promised to put sanity back into education. The parents are trying to save their kids from being casualties of the broken education system. If students are taught to think critically, they would reject most of the tenets they are currently being taught as Marxism requires the masses to be ignorant in order for it to thrive.
As for teaching historical events from several different viewpoints, I wouldn’t trust our educational system in its current liberal biased configuration to have the proper viewpoints. They will pick and choose those viewpoints to distort the historical events to present how they see that historical event. That is how it has been and will be in the future unless all viewpoints of historical events are considered.
The older generation of grown ups were seduced and entranced by nonstop cable TV channels that fed their own prejudices and biases.
In the smart phone era, the grown ups lost the ability focus on any topic for longer than it takes to read a tweet. They've got to pump out their own social media content to "garner" more likes and hearts.
Novels and films require a (1) set up, (2) a change, and (3) a resolution. Tweet-thought forces the entire process into one superficial emotional belch. Perhaps the grown ups will cast away the cursed "smart" machines before its too late, but I wouldn't bet on it.
John Brown was, before anything else, a Millerite fanatic obsessed with Protestant eschatology. He believed a universal race war, ignited in America, and then spread across the world, would herald the Second Coming in Wrath. In many ways, he was Charles Manson's psychic twin.
I used to spend a fair bit of time reading and teaching the thought of Abraham Lincoln. He condemned the actions of John Brown as based on a messianic and dangerous fallacy. Slavery was evil, Lincoln believed, but it made no sense to inflict significant harm on non-slaves as if this would be some kind of compensation. He may have anticipated that slavery was going to have to be abolished as a result of the Civil War (his first choice was to leave slavery where it already existed), but he was not eager to see this done quickly. It's not clear he had much of a plan for what is now known as Reconstruction. Out of this complex history, with Lincoln one of the most thoughtful people ever to engage in politics in the U.S., all the woke come up with is Lincoln saying (in a debate in southern Illinois, where there was sympathy for the white South): if there is a competition among races, I prefer the white race. The woke always sound like they haven't read anything or thought about anything except, indeed, teenagers who are somehow in distress.
It is astonishing to think what the internet makes accessible to students today. Yet when I think back to my own education in the sixties abd seventies, it was hard to find the time to do all the reading even with a much narrower range of materials available to me.
I can’ t access the article, but I agree with the ideas in the excerpt. I tried to use a similar approach in my Early American and Nineteenth
Century American literature courses. In addition to poetry and fiction, we read The Federalist Papers (selections), the Declaration of Independence (first and final drafts), Lincoln’s major addresses, Douglass’s Narrative and famous speeches, as well as several of Thoreau’s anti-slavery essays, like A Plea for Captain John Brown and Slavery in Massachusetts. My objective was to promote political and historical literacy and to develop careful, close reading habits. That is, to promote intelligent, informed historical understanding. My students seemed to appreciate reading and discussing this material, and I definitely enjoyed teaching it.
Even young students can benefit from reading significant literature, instead of books about butts, recently discussed. Classic fairy tales (Grimm’s versions) and classical Greek and Roman myths, among other valuable texts, can be profitably read in elementary and middle schools.
"We've turned our schools into battlegrounds..."
What do you mean, "we," Kemo Sabe?
"Rachael Maddow said it, and she wears glasses" is how it works now.
John Brown was trying to capture guns to lead a slave revolt.
John Brown is the only American executed for treason. That is until more January 6 defendants are sentenced.
What's this 'we' he's talking about. Seems to me the left has turned the schools into a battlefield and parents are fighting a purely defensive battle. Sort of like Zekensky in the Ukraine versus the Russians.
Fun fact - the bell that used to sit in the engine house in Harper’s Ferry currently sits in a secured tower in Marlborough MA. It’s called the John Brown Bell, and was brought back by the regiment from Marlborough that happened upon it after the raid by Brown. They needed a bell for their firehouse back home so they took it, but it took several years to actually get it back to MA.
School Choice ends this problem instantly.
"'Rachael Maddow said it, and she wears glasses' is how it works now."
It is much more than that. She is also a lesbian and is on TV. It doesn't get much more authoritative than that, but it is too bad that she isn't black, Muslim, and a transgender lesbian as well.
David Begley said...
John Brown was trying to capture guns to lead a slave revolt.
Yes, But WHY? Did he Actually think it would work? HOW?
The raid's Only result (that i've seen), is the Increase in force of Southern Militias which DIRECTLY led to the South Thinking that they would succeed if they'd secede
(see what i did there? )
A friend of mine who teaches at a major university points out that it is a good idea to avoid a "sociology first" approach to teaching literature. Let the work speak for itself.
"not just books that focus with grim piety on the contemporary social and psychological problems of teenagers"
Inflicted by progs, who made the therapeutic triumph.
"The culture wars, with their atmosphere of resentment, fear, and petty faultfinding, are hostile to the writing and reading of literature."
If and to the extent that progs win.
"Art has to be able to go to a place that’s messy, a place that’s uncomfortable'..."
Progs are the ones advocating safety.
"The Grown-Ups Are Losing It/We’ve turned schools into battlefields, and our kids are the casualties"
Progs wanted the battle. For a long time only one side was fighting. This article illustrates that the war is now a war, and some progs may be concerned they could actually lose. I don't think they will, but I enjoy seeing some squirm just a bit.
Get rid of the state approved text books. They're created by committee and are boring as hell. Kids should be reading history books available from Amazon that have high ratings. Books such as "Grant" by Ron Chernow, Grant's own memoire, "The Civil War" by Shelby Foote. Those are well written and interesting to read.
The George Packer article seemed to me to be an excellent selfie of the times, a grab bag of attitudes from television reality and the sociological attitude.
"If you live in Virginia, your governor has set up a hotline where they can rat out your teachers to the government."
"One study found that college-educated Democrats were more likely to hold false views about their political enemies than those without four-year degrees."
And the ultimate problem Packer is facing is that only principles will solve the problem of education but principles are out. Instead Packer proposes that a group called "adults" solve the problems caused teachers, parents and state legislators whereas adults are not a different group from teachers, parents and legislators - they're all adults. It's the principles adults choose that differentiate them. How to judge principles? Sociology, Packer's master science, can't assign primacy on an intellectual basis to any set of principles. It can only say what groups hold what principles. I often think these days that America can't survive unless it learns to do philosophy, the science that can rationally analyze principles, such as our founding principles and meet challenges to them in that way. I love this country but we'll never survive if we need to learn to listen to philosophers because we won't do it. And yet we were born from philosophy: "All men are created equal", not from race, creed, color or territory. As they say, "America is hard to find" and it's surprising to see how many immigrants can do it.
The article is far better than it's headline and subhead. The excerpted quotes are a fair introduction to the full argument. But it's not without it's political kneejerks. The criticism of the left's curricular overreach is reasoned, evidence based, calmly presented, and surprisingly close to damning, while criticism of the right often descends to hyperbolic snark. In one short span, we find "Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley...trying to tear up the Constitution," "Donald Trump out of office but still in power," and the January sixers "... looking to hang the speaker of the house."
John Brown was a wacko and a terrorist. He wanted to steal guns and lead a muderous slave revolt. He'd already murdered Southerners in Kansas. Of course, he was doing it for reasons. What terroist doens't have "reasons"?
The comment about "We've turned our classes into a battleground" - made me laugh. Its the same ol' crap.
Left: We've come up with a new classroom lesson that pushes our agenda.
Normal People: We don't want that.
Left: Fuck you, Nazi. Approve or else
Normal People: Sorry.
Left: OMG, you've turned the Classroom into a war zone!
Independents: Can we please just stop all the FIGHTING!!!
So, in Packer's view, the fault lies equally with (i) the teachers and administrators who reduced the schools to Marxist/LGBQ indoctrination mills, and (ii) the parents who are belatedly fighting against it?
How the Atlantic acknowledges a real world problem without disturbing the smug liberals who subscribe.
The reason history is poorly taught in our public schools (with a few honorable exceptions) is that history isn't rocket science. It's much more complicated.
Given that neither the teachers nor the students generally have the time or attention span for complication and nuance, and history isn't rocket science a.k.a. STEM, of course the kids will learn little of value.
But then I didn't learn much of value about history or anything else before college, and even there and in grad school the desire of the student to learn--or not--was the decisive factor.
FWIW the brightest people and best teachers I met through grade 12 were the women--especially for history, which was too often left to the coaches because football.
"The ability to read closely, think critically, evaluate sources, corroborate accounts, and back up their claims with evidence from original documents."
I did some work for the Stanford History Education Group about ten years ago. But also, the line of history materials I created, "MindSparks," is based exactly on the approach indicated in the quote above. I've used almost this exact same formula. FAIR (Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism) is now developing a curriculum meant to counter the CRT/1619 Project travesty, and it also stresses these skills. (Or at least the lessons I've done for them do). I do agree with Scottie Beam Me Up's point about this, which seems to be concern that without solid grounding in content, this stress on skills is simply not enough. Nevertheless, it is crucial. I am with Richard Dillman here on that. As to Lincoln, Lloyd Robertson nails it.
So here is what bothers me. It's nice that the Stanford group gets a nod in this article, but what about FAIR and the other parents groups mobilizing to counteract the propaganda now being force-fed in many schools? That is, why does the media get away with distorting these grassroots efforts as if they are opposed to teaching about race, slavery, abolitionists like John Brown, Jim Crow, etc., when in fact they absolutely do not oppose any such thing. FAIR's curriculum will focus heavily on all of these topics. That is, the standard media narrative has failed to honestly report on a crucial movement in education that is, if anything, the opposite of the interpretive desert and enforced conformity of the left educators in their drive to reconstruct the political consciousness of youth.
Novels and films require a (1) set up, (2) a change, and (3) a resolution. Tweet-thought forces the entire process into one superficial emotional belch.
True, but the set-up in a film is a lot easier for people to process -- and people do process it after a fashion -- than the set-up in a novel, so film (or television) hasn't been a loser in the world of new media.
Even readers of serious or literary fiction have much less patience with long introductory material than they once did, but we can put up with very long continuing television dramas without effort.
Twitter accustoms us to thinking, speaking, and writing in ever smaller soundbites, but television, the internet, email, and texting had already slashed our attention spans to the minimum, so people were more than ready for Twitter.
At this point, it seems like all colleges and universities are teaching (apart from the more technical subjects) is political correctness. Do we really think the resources are there for the system to fix itself from within?
iowan2 said...
I don't care what 10 year olds read, as long as its lots of it.(the "good") will come in time.
Amen, amen and amen
Though I might make a few, a very few, exceptions for a 10 year old. Porn for example. But very few exceptions and even fewer as they age.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
Classic fairy tales (Grimm’s versions) and classical Greek and Roman myths, among other valuable texts, can be profitably read in elementary and middle schools.
My grandson (almost 4) gave me a Disney book to read to him the other night. I'm very proud of that boy!
So I start reading the first story. It turns out to be a version of Hansel & gretel but with mickey and Minnie. When the woman in the forest has mickey in a cage and is about ready to pop Minnie in an oven, I decided to use a bit of creative storytelling instead of sticking to the text.
I do not think stuff like that is appropriate for 4 years.
I would be OK with Grimm in 3rd or 4th grade. Probably not before. By 6th or 7th I might even encourage it.
John LGBTQBNY Henry
How can we trust our children’s education with an ideologue like Packer who claims without an supporting facts that senators Cruz and Harley were “trying to tear up the Constitution”? He doesn’t even point to the reason for the statement. And why does that comment even belong in the article - it’s a non sequitor. He also seems to believe that people show up at school board meetings because they are overly political, not because they want a quality education for their children, not a Marxist brainwashing. My advice is to not take this guy seriously. He is the kind of fraud who qualifies as elite by the left.
So, our children must be educated to be citizens, so that when they grow up and have children, the elites will be able to rule them easily (“Education is a public interest, which explains why parents shouldn’t get to veto any book they think might upset their child,”).
Sorry, fascist, ain’t gonna happen. We’re gonna give you loads of trouble, and raise our kids to give you more.
And we ain’t gonna give the timeserving incompetents in the public schools raises either. They’re already vastly overpaid, given their performance.
Welcome to the party, George. The kevlar vests are over there. Do you know how to operate this weapon?
David Begley said...
John Brown is the only American executed for treason.
_________________
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_convicted_of_treason#United_States says four. In addition to Brown,
“Aaron Dwight Stevens, took part in John Brown's raid and was executed in 1860 for treason against Virginia.
“William Bruce Mumford, convicted of treason and hanged in 1862 for tearing down a United States flag during the American Civil War.
“Mary Surratt, convicted of treason and hanged for conspiring in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865.”
Multiple others are listed as sentenced to death, but had their sentences commuted. Interesting that people don't think to check such assertions before making them.
tim in vermont said...
Once the proles and middle class got access to college, it became too dangerous to educate college students, due to sheer numbers and suspect class loyalties, and so indoctrination became the order of the day.
_________________________
Oh, it started before that. Once the children of working class parents began to finish high school in large numbers, back in the late 19th Century, the dumbing down began.
Gotta keep the lower class in their place.
For example, to answer the question of what John Brown was trying to do when he raided Harpers Ferry in 1859, they read several accounts, including one by Brown’s son, an excerpt from the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, and a speech and letter from Brown himself.
how about documents from the other side?
The goal isn’t just to teach students the origins of the Civil War, but to give them the ability to read closely, think critically, evaluate sources, corroborate accounts, and back up their claims with evidence from original documents.
How the hell do you do that when you're not giving them what the opposition had to say about John Brown?
For that matter, what less "firery" abolitionists had to say?
You can't learn to "read closely, think critically" when you're not given things to read that teh professor thinks you should reject.
You're also not learning to "read closely, think critically" if they only give you the weakest versions of the side they oppose.
When the Atlantic uses the phrase 'critical thinking,' what is meant is Critical Theory.
"The best way to interest young people in literature is to have them read good literature."
Then stop having them read "diverse" "literature".
Because the two are always diametrically opposed
It's Dems who have weaponized education of kids against literature, against critical thinking (in the "name" of critical thinking), and against parents.
Many of bad things "we" as Americans have done were actually US Democrats:
Slavery,
ending Federal integration (under Wilson),
Jim Crow laws (all by legislatures dominated by Dems),
KKK -- a Southern White Democrat org.
Funny sad that so many Blacks support Dems who treat them like helpless little Black Sambos.
Instead of adults with the freedom, and responsibility, of making decisions about their lives.
@Lloyd,
"Out of this complex history, with Lincoln one of the most thoughtful people ever to engage in politics in the U.S., all the woke come up with is Lincoln saying (in a debate in southern Illinois, where there was sympathy for the white South): if there is a competition among races, I prefer the white race. The woke always sound like they haven't read anything or thought about anything except, indeed, teenagers who are somehow in distress."
That articulates so well my issues with the current CRT emphasis these days. I went through a "Lincoln stage" as well, where I read his speeches and letters voraciously. He was like a DaVinci, or a Mozart, or an Einstein - a genius for the ages. He also seemed providentially chosen for the time period, and the crisis that America endured.
To see such a deep and brilliant man, who had multilayered considerations about law, politics, and history, relegated to "he was a racist" and "he didn't really care about slavery" is so deeply offensive. Not only do the woke not read him, they wouldn't comprehend him if they tried. Nor do they understand history, and how it can change a person. Nor do they understand the practicalities of politics, or the complexities and nuances of the American system of government. The CRT people are utterly two dimensional thinkers, without depth or substance. Not one of them has the intelligence that Lincoln had in his pinkie fingernail.
High school, class of '62. Grades seven through eleven had "common learnings", a two-hour block which included history and associated readings--Crucible, etc. Devil and Dan'l Webster, so forth, along with composition education.
Michigan State immediately following had freshman-required American Thought and Language, combining history and associated literature and social movements.
Sorry to hear it's not universal.
Mike of Snoqualmie suggests some reading about the ACWABAWS but I don't think kids could possibly benefit from Chernow or Foote. Chernow plods, exhaustively; Foote gets carried away by fine writing and is pretty sloppy about details too. (His trilogy really picks up steam after the first 350 pages or so . . .)
Grant's memoirs would be OK for good readers, and so would Catton IMHO.
I'm old enough to know that this is only one more iteration of the "Kids have to read crap" complaint that is at least 50 and probably older. And I'm smart enough to realize that most people HATE to read, especially history.
Serious reading, of history, in public schools? He's kidding, right?
Andrew.
The same could be said about Thomas Jefferson. Many of our founders were much more complicated men than the left would have us believe.
"I don't care what 10 year olds read, as long as its lots of it.(the "good") will come in time."
I was very fortunate that my siblings and myself were encouraged to read and we were allowed from an early age to read whatever we wanted.
I have been puzzled for some time how it became normal for fiction to be taught in schools. There are wealths of historical documents, biographies, works of philosophy, histories and scientific documents well within the reading comprehension range of teenagers - including our governing documents as well as the public debates at key points in our history. The evidence of the last 70 years does not seem to validate literature as the key to empathy and understanding.
There is a novel by someone whose name I cannot recall at the moment, a version of John Brown's life. I thought it very good. Russell someone. Banks; there's no way I'd ever recall the name of the book, Cloudsplitter.
Funny sad that so many Blacks support Dems who treat them like helpless little Black Sambos.
Instead of adults with the freedom, and responsibility, of making decisions about their lives.
Harvard just muzzled a black Economics professor for contending that black kids are capable of learning and it's not racism.
Here is the story.
Blogger Mike of Snoqualmie said...
Get rid of the state approved text books. They're created by committee and are boring as hell. Kids should be reading history books available from Amazon that have high ratings.
When I was in 8th grade I discovered my cousin's high school "World History" book. It read like a novel. It began with the Dorian invasion and progressed to the First World War. He graduated from high school in 1938. I lost it when I went off to college and have tried to find a copy for years.
The author identify a problem - schools are a partisan battlefield. But instead of the natural solution, letting parents choose between the competing approaches, he argues the exact opposite: “Education is a public interest, which explains why parents shouldn’t get to veto any book.” What? Education is a public interest therefore the public should have no say? About their own children’s education?
Mike of Snoqualmie
Reading professional historians is tricky when it comes to school kids. Professors do not work to provide the necessary context; they assume their readers have a lot of it. There is a need for history textbooks written with some passion, focus and in a (single) human voice. I agree the ones that major textbook companies produce are factory-made crap. They are one of the many crimes our education blob foists on the citizenry. One reason radical Howard Zinn got his "People's History" so widely ensconced in schools is that it is damn well written and gripping. It happens to be atrocious history, unfortunately. One good overview of U.S. history is Wilfred McClay's "Land of Hope."
Flashman left the best account of the events leading up to the event, as well as how the Raid unfolded.
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